The Death of the Human Brick
by Vestergaard
Summary: [One-shot] As an immortal monster, Vincent must come to grips with what it means to be a human. Lady Yuffie attempts to help him find change and death more tolerable. Yuffentine.


"The Death of the Human Brick"

A one-shot by Great Materia Hunter Yuffie

* * *

****

Hey wait,  
Great smile.  
Sensitive to faith,  
Not denial.  
But hey who's on trial?  
You're weightless, you are exotic.  
You need something for which to care.  
Sandy, why can't we look the other way?

Interpol - "Evil"

There was once a man who would have given anything in exchange for death.

He traveled the world, searching for it. Once they woke him, he could not return to the solitude and dark misery that was his former existence; he could only stumble on, weary and hating himself and sick with memory and revenge satisfied and wasted, meaningless days.

There was nothing left for him, nothing to interest him, everyone was dead but him, and he was dead in all but name. Alive yet dead, yet alive, but still in the end not even worth the space between breaths, the breath he did not need to take to live. He breathed anyway, a kind of spiteful, useless action. Spiteful toward an evil dead man, because his non-life still revolved around that day a lifetime ago when the gunshot rang out and pain and chaos and death became the synonym for his non-existence, all because a madman willed to make his son into a god, just to prove it could be done.

The evil man was dead, and the dead man was still alive.

So it all evened out in the end.

And the world turned and turned and turned, and he turned against himself in the years after he woke again. He had enough time on his hands just to watch it turn around.

He thought he went insane many times. There were times when he thought the sun or rain or wind or damnation would finally crumple his soul into dust, but he had been trained never to have a soul, so he decided it was impossible to die that way, anyway. So he walked on, wandering the earth until the day came when some benevolent spirit would finally kill him.

The world was filled with strangers. The ones who woke him up had gone their own ways. He saw no one he knew, so he didn't speak to them.

He wished he could die, but he knew (hoped?) it was impossible.

Once, the world shifted and he thought he found someone he knew. He gripped her arm painfully with his clawed and human hands -she had looked frightened, standing there, but he knew her and thought she recognized him (after all, in her eyes was the same fear that had been with him since the beginning, and the same fear that had been in **_her_** eyes the last time he saw **_her_** alive) but then the world shifted again, and he was gripping the arm of a woman he couldn't remember, but was familiar to him. She was like a childhood friend who died in a car crash - and then years later (in his mind?) a vision comes of what she would have looked like if she had a chance to grow up.

But here she was in front of him (a woman), impossible because she should have been dead when she was a girl, so she would remain the same in his memory, so she would stay the same, stay young. Now she was alive, and the girl was dead, and he knew he should know her and cursed himself for forgetting.

The fear was in her eyes, exploding, and he could tell she was about to scream. But then, the world shifted **_again_** (it must be really spinning today, the spiteful hunk of rock) and her expression changed, and he could tell from that look that she knew him, and that she was sad and relieved and she was going to cry or laugh or scream or smile.

Who are you? he wondered, but it had been years since he had spoken to anyone, and it was hard to remember the words.

"Vince?" the voice was different, even. But she knew his name and it was only polite that he should know hers. He wracked his brain, eyes too-wide in furious concentration, and then he gasped.

"Yuffie?"

* * *

There was once a girl who was destined live (and die) and who loved her mother very much. 

She was four and she was a princess. The fighting had broken out in the city, and her father told her to lead the other children to Da Chao for safety while the adults fought against the empire-across-the-sea. She looked down on the town on fire - the first time it was set aflame, but not the last.

She was eight and she was frightened. Her mother fought a duel with a white-and-black general. Her mother was killed, cut down with her blood streaming and soaking the carpet. She was hiding behind a screen and crying and crying, scared and trembling. Her father found her there, and cried to find her safe, cried that the mother was gone forever. The last time they cried together.

She was eight and she was strangely calm. Her father signed a paper, dressed in his flowing robes and the pale halo of duty. She stood by, wide-eyed, wondering why her father wouldn't kill the man who handed him the pen, the man who walked with deference and fear through the streets of her home, the man who killed her mother.

She was twelve and she was a runaway. She fought desperately, tricked people, stole, rejected her father and her own sorrows and putting on a cheerful face to hide it. She was determined to destroy the company and revive the fallen empire, if she had to do it single-handed.

She was sixteen, and she was a hero. She never expected to do anything so important; she would have never expected to have revenge. The others never understood the depths of her involvement in it; she had never explained it to them. She was merely thankful that they had let her come with them, thankful for the opportunity to finally set things right, and that she didn't have to do it alone.

She was twenty and she was afraid. Her father was dying. When he passed, she held his hand and they cried again, for the first time together since **_then_**.

She was twenty-two, and she was married. He was a good man, and he took care of her, and they had three children together. She loved him, and he loved her in return. The country that had fallen began to rise again, in the memories of the elders, in the hopes of the children, in the work of the people.

She was thirty-six and she was a widow. Her children cried with her over the grave of their father, by the grave of her own father, and her heart broke again, shattered within her. Without a word, the Lady left Wutai, left her home, left her children because they were not enough to keep her in such a sad place.

She was thirty-five and she was alone. She wanted desperately to return to her children, but could not face her teenage sons, who would look at her with their father's eyes and make her cry again.

* * *

"Is it you? I haven't seen you…any of you in so long," her voice was strange and deeper, gentler and filled with pain. 

"You are older," he could think of nothing more he could say to her. How many years had passed since any of them had spoken to him? How many long years would he have to kill the memories of his only friends, replacing them with images of the strangers they would become?

"You look…just the same," she whispered. All the people simply flowed passed them on the street, on their way to something else, not realizing how important this was.

"I know," he finally let go of her arms, and she rubbed them with her own. Her hair was longer, brushing her upper arms. She was no longer so thin, no longer so happy, but there was **something** indisputable about her, that made her sort of the same person she had been before.

She tried to crack a smile (ah, then that **something** was the memory of her smiling face, so long ago, but even her smile was slightly changed, tiny wrinkles showing). "You're even wearing the same outfit. Haven't changed your clothes in twenty years?"

The world shifted.

He couldn't meet her eyes.

Maybe it was that the girl in her was dead to him.

Maybe it was that the man in him was dead to him.

"What…are you doing here?" she asked, after a moment. An innocent question.

He didn't answer, reeling again with the shock of her change. She was different, and would never be the same again. People die every day, but not because they're set into the ground, never to be seen again, but because infants die to become children, children perish to become teenagers, and teenagers are killed to become adults.

And the world shifts around again, killing and killing and killing.

It was funny - he was the only one who would always stay the same, and there was no one to notice that he would never die. No one to say, "Here is Vincent, he will always be the same, he will never die, and you can build on his solidity," because no one knew him, and no one spoke to him, and friends didn't care when they said they always would.

He would have thought seeing change would begin to get easier over time, but seeing the death of the girl-child Yuffie was like (years ago) when **she** had died, and again like when Turk-Vincent died, shot by the mad scientist, and again like when Hero-Vincent died, forgotten by the friends who made him so heroic.

Perhaps he wasn't so solid after all. Perhaps even immortal monsters changed over time.

"I need you to do something for me," he said, the words coming out of their own violation, cracking around the edges.

She stared at him for a second. "What do you need?"

He tried to look at her, but her face was changed from what he remembered and the change was so painful. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and told her what he needed.

"I need you to kill me."

Her eyes went wide and she almost looked like she used to, young and scared and hiding it with bluster and bravado.

"Kill you?" incredulous, a question from one who unquestioningly loves life.

"I cannot commit suicide. Chaos will not allow it," he was speaking, but not directing the words and not regretting them, knowing what he needed, but for the first time feeling the terror that comes from one who knows death is approaching (with a slow and steady gait).

"Why…do you want to die?" she was scared now, grabbing his sleeve and pulling him into an alleyway. "Why would you want to die? That's so selfish!"

But there was no girlish teasing in her tone; that would have been the forte of the Girl-Yuffie, the one who was dead. The older one knew the pain of death even more intimately, but still couldn't understand his pain.

He closed his eyes. Her arms were gripping his now, trying to force some sense into him. She was yelling at him, but he couldn't hear her, he couldn't look at her (because she was a stranger to him) and so he looked at the bricks to the side, no expression on his face, waiting for the tirade to end.

"I can't…I couldn't ever understand you, Vince. It would make me sad if you died, can't you see that? How could you do something so stupid? I haven't seen you in years, and that's all you can say? You stupid jerk! How could you ask me to do something like that?" she was exhausted, on the verge of tears, something besides the strange red-cloaked man that was making her sad. She wasn't looking at him either.

Perhaps because he was always the same, he was hurting her more than if he was changeable.

Then her face seemed to crumple and she collapsed against his chest, sobbing.

Perhaps he wasn't forgotten after all.

His hand (and other hand, the claws clicking) came up to rest gently on her small head. He stared at the brick, wondering if it had a soul, and if it did, where it went when it died, and if the other bricks would miss it when it did. Would the hole remind them of the loss, every day?

He was ready to die, he realized.

Now that he knew that a hole would be left in **someone **(**anyone**, even a stranger that he knew), if he left. Now that he knew what was preventing him from leaving. Just like the feelings of guilt that had made him stay inside a black box for thirty years, so too did feelings prevent him from suicide.

When he first saw the changes that had been made to his body, the feelings were that of revenge.

And when revenge was complete, the feelings became that of sorrow and self-pity.

He had wanted there to be a hole, and he found one, a small one, in Yuffie. She said she would miss him when he died, and that was enough. Ending it would be permissible, because someone would remember him, and his strange existence would not be a complete waste.

"I would…live forever, if I allowed it," he whispered, stoking her hair, looking at the brick.

She stilled, and then looked up at him, tears standing in her eyes.

"What makes you so sad, Yuffie?" he whispered, not looking at her.

After a moment, she told him.

"My husband died."

Strange, that she had a husband. That she had been married.

No, she _wasn't_ young, because the teenager had been dead and gone for long years.

You're dead, Yuffie. We die every day, because we don't remain the same. We betray those who count on us to be the same, and they betray us in return. And the world continues to shift, with or without us.

He finally looked at her, at her eyes. Her eyes were the same, but the rest was a torrent of sorrow and change that he **knew** couldn't be necessary.

And I died many years before you met me. So don't cry.

"You have children." It wasn't a question.

She nodded, wide-eyed.

"Then you should be with them. It is not necessary to bury your children along with your husband. Go back to your home, to your family."

He spoke to her and she understood and was comforted by his words. Then, impulsively, she wrapped her arms around him, embracing him and trying to banish the darkness inside him. The impulse was maternal and impossible, but she still clung to him, desperate to help, like she would be desperate to help her own son. He stood stock-still in her arms, wondering many things.

"Come with me," she said. _You need my help. Please._

"I'm sorry," he said. And that was it.

It is human nature to change. We die as we grow.

She told him to call her. She didn't want to see him in pain.

He nodded and she left hesitatingly, not wanting to leave him alone, but unable to resist the need to return to her children. She stared at him over her shoulder with a strange expression until he lost sight of her in the crowds of strangers.

* * *

"I am one hundred and twenty-seven." 

His true age. He felt as old.

"I am ninety-seven."

The age without the thirty years of sleep. It hadn't been restful.

"I am twenty-seven."

The age he looked. He had even been in love, back when he really was that old, or as close as he could get to love without having a soul.

"I've been dead for one hundred years today."

He looked at the deep hole he had dug for himself that morning, then quickly looked away again.

"I cannot allow myself to live forever," he whispered, trying to convince himself.

He had lied to her, all those years ago - Chaos didn't care whether he lived or died. It was only because of his own cowardice that he was still alive. He had even asked her to kill him, trying to escape his ultimate destiny. He heard the wind pass through over the ocean and the grass, and he knew that it was finally time to die.

He let himself live until she was dead. It was strange how someone he barely knew could affect him so profoundly, but he found he could find ways to keep himself going just as long as he could picture her face (changed face) in his arms, as long as he could picture her being grieved at his death. After he had found the hole that he would leave with his passing, he couldn't help but keep it filled for her sake, even though it would have comforted him to know she would miss him.

She had lived until she was eighty-six, and he found himself fighting for life for fifty years, because he didn't want her to be sad on his account.

If nothing else, Vincent Valentine was chivalrous. So, like a devoted lover, he waited for her to die, and then killed himself in a meadow by the ocean.

Death must come to all humans, even ones who must choose to die. It is human nature to change.

Vincent Valentine would prove that he was human, after all.

He gripped his gun and fear gripped his heart (humans have a fear of death, more than anything else...there is always an animal in him screaming to live, through the pain) and he drew it toward his temple.

A shot rang out, and the last twisted creation of Hojo collapsed into the hole, crumpled like a doll.

He was a human; he could change, and he could die.

And perhaps in the afterlife, everything would remain the same, and he could finally rest in the white slumber of order and peace.

* * *

AN: Most romantic Yuffentine you ever read, huh? Jayslashkay. I wrote this in the two hours before my History final began, because I was trying to distract myself. So it's kind of negative, because I was really, really nervous. Also, I was watching the **WEIRD** Interpol "Evil" music video (the one with the creepy muppet), which probably made this really incomprehensible. Hope it's good quality and not too confusing. And sorry I killed Vincent, I didn't initially mean to. Review if you want. 


End file.
